


a toast (to what i have never had before)

by doritoFace1q



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcohol, Historical References, M/M, Mentioned Andy | Andromache of Scythia, Mentioned Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Mentioned Character Death, Mentioned Nile Freeman, Outer Space, Presents, Soft Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Soft Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, come for the gays stay for the alcohol crash course, fucking around through history, only swears are in the tags and the notes i think i deserve a pat on the back for this don't you, you know as you do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28293741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doritoFace1q/pseuds/doritoFace1q
Summary: He kissed Joe again on the forehead, then on each eyelid, then on his jaw. Joe chuckled and turned his head to press his own lips to Nicky’s wrist. “I have something for you,” Nicky told him.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 7
Kudos: 34
Collections: The Old Guard Gift Exchange 2020





	a toast (to what i have never had before)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [longistheroadshortisthelife](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=longistheroadshortisthelife).



> gift exchange present for [longistheroadshortisthelife](https://longistheroadshortisthelife.tumblr.com/) (probably not as historical as you wanted, sorry T^T)!
> 
> re: the drinking thing - i'm neither muslim or devoutly religious, but we do see joe drinking a few times in the movie so i'm going to assume it's fine?
> 
> historical notes/other things at the bottom

**Arizona, the United States of America. Axel Safehouse. 2133.**

Nicky found his husband on the roof, lounging on the clay tiles with his arms beneath his head. There was a breeze blowing from the west, teasing his curls and tugging at his shirt, and his skin seemed to glow in a way that was almost ethereal by the fading starlight. Beneath the light of the waxing moon, he looked calm—peaceful, even. His eyes were closed, chest rising and falling slowly, evenly, and, had Nicky been anyone but himself, he would have assumed he were asleep.

Carefully, he sat down and scooted to sit next to him. Joe smiled and rested a hand lightly on his knee. “Hey, babe.”

Nicky leaned down and pecked him on the forehead. Joe’s other hand came up, winding through his hair and guiding him into another kiss, this time on his mouth. Nicky hummed as Joe scratched idly at his scalp and traced his free hand down his stomach, fingers lingering just above his hip.

Joe reached down, linking their fingers together. “Hey,” he said into Nicky’s cheek, rubbing their joined knuckles over the curve of his ribs. “I’m fine, habibi.”

_ You are now _ , Nicky wanted to say.  _ You are  _ now. Not yesterday, when he’d been crushed beneath a falling building. Not that morning, when they’d finally dug him out, not when he’d writhed in Nicky’s arms in the back of the truck, drenched in sweat and tears as his body knit itself back together. Not eight hours ago when he’d held Nicky in a grip that hurt almost too much beneath the spray of the shower. Not twenty minutes ago when he’d kicked aside the sheets and stumbled out of their room.  _ You are  _ now.

He kissed Joe again on the forehead, then on each eyelid, then on his jaw. Joe chuckled and turned his head to press his own lips to Nicky’s wrist.

“I have something for you,” Nicky told him. Joe cracked his eyes open and peered up at him with barely-concealed curiosity.

He let out a groan of mingled delight as Nicky extracted the bottle he’d been hiding from behind his back. “You spoil me, Nicolò,” he said, reaching for it. Nicky tatted and tapped his shoulder until he sat up, rolling his eyes even as he leaned forwards to kiss Nicky again. “What’s the occasion?”

“Does there have to be one?” Nicky asked, swirling the mead around in the bottle. Joe hummed and Nicky twisted his wrist, freeing the cap with a  _ pop _ .

“Wait.” Joe stilled his hands with his. Nicky smiled and let him take the bottle. “Mm.” He takes a deep whiff from the open neck, face screwed up into a masterful imitation of Andy whenever she’d tasted a new sample of baklava. “Ethiopia?” he guessed, opening one eye and peeking up at Nicky. “Poland,” he corrected, spotting the look on Nicky’s face. “No? New York?”

“You wound me, tesoro,” said Nicky. Joe pouted. He looked unfairly adorable when he did so, and Nicky couldn’t resist leaning forwards and giving him a quick peck on the lips, then his cheek, and then the hollow of his throat. Then, after a half-second of consideration, he blew on his ear.

“Nicky!” Joe laughed. “I’m going to spill it!”

“Don’t you dare,” Nicky growled, nipping at Joe’s neck. “Do you know how hard it was to hide that from Booker? In his own house, no less.”

“A wonder in itself,” Joe agreed, tipping his head back to let Nicky mouth at his throat. Nicky finally chuckled and leaned back, letting Joe take a swig. “Mm.” He smacked his lips, screwing up his eyes.

“Good?”

“Dusty.” Nicky elbowed him lightly and Joe grinned, taking another sip. “Good. Very good.” He held out the bottle and Nicky took a gracious sip of his own.

“Good,” he agreed, licking his lips satisfactorily. Joe leaned back against the roof and, for a while, they simply sat there, trading sips beneath the speckled midnight sky.

“Medovukha!” Joe yelled suddenly, sitting up straight. “Russia, ‘15, you—wait.” He narrowed his eyes and Nicky bit his lip, trying his hardest not to laugh. “ _ I _ bought that for you, you little vixen!” he exclaimed. Nicky let out a screech as Joe tackled him across the roof, shaking with laughter as he dug his fingers into his armpits, tickling him mercilessly until he begged him to stop.

(Later, Nicky half-heartedly suggested soaking up the spilled mead with a sponge. Joe tackled him again.)

***

**Otjozondjupa, Namibia. Cave. 1903.**

A loud  _ crack _ reverberated through the cavern as Joseph hit the ground and he swore, grabbing the wall. Booker shot him a glance, one eyebrow raised, and Joseph nodded, jaw clenched. The other man nodded back wearily before vanishing after Andrea into the darkness.

There was a grating screech of metal against stone and Joseph quickly stood, throwing out his arms just in time to catch Nicholas as he skidded down the shaft. “Stupid cave,” he muttered, straightening his husband. “You alright?”

Nicholas nodded, tugging off his cap. “Are you?”

Joseph shrugged. “Ankle.” Nicholas frowned. “It’s fine,” Joseph hastened to add. “Just landed bad, I’m still healing—”

Nicholas tutted and took his hand, maneuvering him to sit against a wall. “Wait,” he ordered, pointing a stern finger when Joseph tried to stand. “Wait,” he repeated, then ducked into the shadows.

Joseph sighed and leaned his head back, stretching his legs out. It was still throbbing, loathe as he was to admit it. He watched with an almost morbid fascination as his foot slowly straightened itself, twisting back into place. He could, if he strained his ears, hear the faint creak of his bones as they realigned themselves. It didn’t even hurt that much.

Nicholas still wasn’t back. Joseph grimaced and began working at the buttons of his coat, a task made significantly more difficult by the blood drying between the clasps. He bit back a gag as he worked the tip of his thumbnail through the plug; neck shots always bled more.

Finally, he managed to more shake than shrug his coat off, wrinkling his nose when it hit the ground as a stiff sheet. What a shame—he’d liked that one.

“Joseph?”

“Hm?” Joseph glanced up. “Yeah, still here.”

Nicholas dropped his bag by Joseph’s feet and sat next to him. He’d shed his own coat, and had what looked like one of Andrea’s old shawls wrapped around his shoulders. There was a smudge of dirt on his face and Joseph reached up, wiping it away with his thumb. Nicholas smiled, letting his cheek linger in Joseph’s palm for a moment before leaning away. “Here.” He pushed a cloth-wrapped bundle into Joseph’s hands.

Joseph raised an eyebrow. “Where’d you get this from?” he asked as he began peeling back the layers Nicholas had wrapped it in. The scrap linen might once have been white, and was almost tacky with dirt.

“Buried it.”

“When?”

Nicholas shrugged. “‘77, ‘78? I bought it in ‘76.”

Joseph was grinning by the time the bottle finally rolled into his lap. “15?”

Nicholas shook his head. “14.”

Joseph laughed, lifting the bottle to peer at the faded label. He whistled. “Grenache, Nico?”

“Sardinia,” said Nicholas, resting his chin on Joseph’s shoulder. Joseph tilted his head, resting his cheek against his husband’s hair. “I was saving it for a rainy day.”

Joseph ran a hand up and down Nicholas’s arm, stroked his skin through a slit in his sleeve until he felt him relax. “It was a nice villa,” he recalled. Nicholas exhaled slowly, and Joseph pressed his nose into his hair, breathing in deeply. He was coated in a thin layer of dust—the ride over, perhaps, or just the slit of a shaft they called an opening—and his skin was tacky with sweat. The side of his head was matted with blood, his hair dyed the colour of rust, and Joseph leaned down, pressing his mouth to the skin below it. The beat of Nicholas’s pulse fluttered against his lips and he felt Nicholas’s hand encircle his wrist, fingers pressed over his vein.

Finally, Joseph drew away. Nicholas looked at him imploringly and Joseph chuckled, raising the bottle again. “Booker would kill for this, you know.”

“Too bad it is not for him, then,” said Nicholas, lip quirking.

Joseph pressed his lips to his temple, smiling into his hair. “Glasses?”

Nicholas laughed lightly, resting his head on his husband’s shoulder. “Live a little, Joseph.”

Joseph snorted and popped the cork.

***

**The United Reformation, New Caspian Spiral. The** **_Scythian III_ ** **. 3099.**

He heard the creak of metal before the beep and grate of the door sliding open. The ship was not a quiet one, nor was it particularly new.

(It wasn’t their only, of course; he knew Booker and Nils had cruisers stowed in convenient asteroid fields, and he’d eat a wrench if Zyin didn’t have an entire fleet stashed away somewhere. He and Ynko had their own crafts hidden across three systems, and Veyuz suspected he himself had buried enough spare parts across various moons to build them more than a few a liners.)

It wasn’t the first ship they’d shared together, either, nor, judging by the growing frequency of things needing fixing, would it be the last. (“You’re butchering my ship, you old mules,” Zyin had signed furiously the other day after Booker had hit a panel too hard and hurled himself into space. Veyuz had snorted and launched into an eager retelling of London ‘20 while Nils patted Booker’s shoulder until the blue receded from his skin. Ynko had just watched, the smile tugging at his lips turning into a laugh when Zyin firmly declared them all insane and waltzed back off to the cockpit.)

But, still, he held onto it all the same.

(Things grew precious with time, as people grew sacred; the  _ Scythian _ was not a port in the Maghreb, or an island in the south, but it was home all the same.)

The steps shook faintly as Ynko sat down next to him, a blanket draped over his shoulder. He raised one arm, cocking his head, and Veyuz shuffled closer, letting him drape the rest over his shoulder. It did little against the drafts of the cabin, and Ynko had to hold onto the ends to keep it draped over both of them. It was as close to perfect as he was sure they could get.

Ynko tucked his chin over Veyuz’s shoulder. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

Veyuz gave the globe in his palm a quick spin. It flickered as it turned, the projection flickering and quivering for a moment, like a hologram in one of those old space movies Nils still loved (wonderfully inventful, but not terribly accurate, she’d been disappointed to learn; Veyuz was just glad he’d never have to meet a Gungan). Ynko reached over, dragging the familiar blue ball to a stop with the tip of his finger. Veyuz traced a path from the tip of Africa across the sea and over Israel. The globe jumped at his touch, the shadow of his hand splitting into a many-headed beast across the seven seas for a moment before he closed his fist. The orb vanished.

Ynko covered his hand with his own and brought it to his lips, pressing a feather-light kiss to his knuckles. Veyuz smiled and cupped his cheek. “You know,” he said, stroking the curve beneath his husband’s eye, “I was just thinking of that time in Malta.”

He felt Ynko smile against his neck. “Which Malta?” he asked, curving closer to him. “I’ve almost forgotten.”

Veyuz gasped in mock affront. “My own husband!” he accused. Ynko laughed and nudged him lightly in the side. Veyuz pressed a hand to his heart. “I don’t think I will ever recover, my once-heart,” he told him.

Ynko tugged at the blanket, and Veyuz whimpered dramatically as it slipped from his shoulders. “I have something for you,” he said, reaching into the bag at his feet that Veyuz had just noticed.

“Is it a sweater?” he asked pitifully. Ynko straightened, and Veyuz’s eyes widened. “ _ Ynko _ ,” he breathed. “Does Nils know you have this?” Ynko laughed.

“I have held on to this for too long for Zyin to throw it out of an airlock, my love.”

Veyuz laughed too. “Right.” He turned the jar around, cradled the glass—real, Earth-blown  _ glass _ —in his hands. The liquor seemed to shimmer between the dim glow of the lights, the surface rippling with every rumble of the ship. The slender metal fixings seal were dull but smooth beneath his fingers, speaking of millennia of care. “How long?” he asked.

Ynko dragged his lips across Veyuz’s jaw. “Do you remember New Orleans?” he asked.

Veyuz couldn’t resist a grin. “Which New Orleans?” he asked. “I can’t seem to recall.”

“Oh?” Ynko asked drily. “Apt.”

Veyuz laughed. “And moonshine on the moon isn’t?”

“Near a moon,” said Ynko. “Near several moons, actually.”

Veyuz could almost see the fumes twisting out of the jar when he cracked the lid open; they danced like fingers of smoke through lifeless air, curling, serpentine, around steel and sterile lights. His throat burned with the first sip, and his eyes with the second. It seared his skin through his chest, leaving behind lashes of past centuries and dragged to his eyes tears shed in a world long gone. Gunpowder and cigarettes and buildings that had touched the earth, not the sky. Forest firefights and granite quarries and brass bands in alleyways. Air sealed with dust that landed, ghostlike, on glass and wood the way fingers do on the skin of lovers, cars that choked on their own rubber, powder burns that vanished and soot-black stains that stayed. Suits and polished tumblers and dresses that flashed like broken diamonds by the light of imported chandeliers. Dancing with Ynko, Nicky, _Nicolò_ by candlelight and under the moon, wiping blood from his cheek under the stars and sweat from his lips beneath the arch of painted ceilings. Chasing the flames on his lips on stainless grates among their former stars, raising his hands, his lips, and falling to his knees in toast and pledge.

  1. 1926\. Two thousand years and a hundred times more lifetimes lost and found, and carried after and in between.



“I love you,” he says and said and says again. His hand takes his, thumb caressing the edges of the same silver ring forged so many centuries ago.

“I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> \- Medovukha is a cheaper, easier-to-make version of mead found in Slavic regions that was popular from the pagan times to the 19th century. Joe bought this particular bottle for Nicky in 1815 while they were hanging around Russia looking for Booker.
> 
> \- Ethiopia, Poland, and New York are other places known for mead; tej is an Ethiopian honey wine.
> 
> \- There's a few different ways mead can be aged in the 21st century ([here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3at0R5Q-NU) a short video if you're interested) - Nicky probably bought a fancy airlock and switched it out every few years when he got the chance. So, yes, the mead they're drinking is very old and probably overfermented but it's not like it'll kill them so
> 
> \- There are at least 124 known caves in Namibia, and 42 of them are in the Otjozondjupa Region. They're known for their beauty, and many have very high, vertical entrances; bad for normal people, great for a group of immortals with one brain cell
> 
> \- Zippers weren't used commercially for clothes until 1925. Also, buttons weren't widespread in Europe until the 13th century, so I can imagine Joe's pretty frustrated about that, too.
> 
> \- Grenache is a type of red wine grape originating from Sardinia, an Italian island (the bigger of the two blobs left of the boot)
> 
> \- Corks weren't a thing until the 18th century-ish; people just stuffed oily rags into bottles before that. Nicky replaced the bottle later (again, would probably kill any normal human but immortality)
> 
> \- "Island in the south" - Malta, obviously
> 
> \- During the 1920s and 30s, America had a prohibition on alcohol. People were not happy about this, and so bootleggers began brewing and transporting illegal alcohol called moonshine. And still illegal today, likely because of safety reasons - badly brewed moonshine can cause people to go blind or be deadly.
> 
> \- I'm not saying Nicky and Joe inspired The Great Gatsby, but Nicky and Joe inspired the Great Gatsby
> 
> (Joe "heart eyes motherfucker" al-Kaysani, probably: His heart is a well of love so deep a man could draw from it for millennia without even seeing the shadow of the bottom, and in his eyes lie the comfort and kindness kingdoms have been built to find. His laughter is my guide in the darkest of nights, and his smile—"
> 
> F. Scott Fitzgerald, taking notes: go on)
> 
> \- Veyuz and Ynko = Joe and Nicky, Nils = Nile (future space people looked at vowels and said "no <3" and i for one think that's very sexy of them)
> 
> I've got [tumblr](https://doritoface1q.tumblr.com/)


End file.
